In which I go tasteless
By Thoreau
It’s September 11 again. Happens every year. It’s the anniversary of a day on which a lot of people died. A lot of people die for all sorts of reasons every day, but this particular death anniversary is used to manipulate us and maintain the fear and jingoism. So, in recognition of the way that this day is used to manipulate us, let me congratulate the winners of September 11.
First and foremost, congratulations to the Bush administration and all the other elites of the Republican Party. This was, without a doubt, the best day of your 8 years. You got everything you wanted because of this day. Heckuva job, boys!
Related to that, congratulations to the military, the CIA, the Department of Homeland Security, and all of the rent-seeking contractors that feed off your budgets. Your continued funding is untouchable for the foreseeable future, all because of this day. So, take those trillions and buy some champagne! This is, without a doubt, your day.
Congratulations to the Serious People. This is your perpetual justification.
Finally, congratulations to Al Qaeda. You wanted a war between Islam and the West, and you got it. Yes, we were meddling in Muslim countries before 9/11, just as we were over-feeding the military and “intelligence” communities prior to 9/11, but 9/11 really turned it up to…er, 11. Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, flying killer robots in Pakistan, special forces in the Philippines, saber-rattling against Iran, and God only knows what else. Open advocacy for torture (as opposed to the plausibly deniable “a few bad apples” of 9/10), protests outside mosques, disavowal of habeas corpus, the whole shebang. Heckuva job, Osama.
So, I encourage all of the Republicans, Al Qaeda members, and weapons manufacturers reading this to pop open a champagne bottle and sing the song “Some people wait a lifetime, for a moment like this…” as you reflect on the events 9 years ago today.
Pingback by “9-11″ and Other Failures of Imagination « zunguzungu —
September 11, 2010 @ 2:06 pm
[...] This is what animates Kumar’s interest in people like Hemant Lakhani, for example, the sad-sack Willy Loman who was entrapped into buying a missile from the FBI and selling it back the FBI (after the FBI shipped it to itself). It seems eminently clear that Lakhani could never and would never have committed an act of terrorism without someone else basically doing it for him, and yet the point is that when the FBI basically handed him a willing seller and buyer, he was ready without hesitation to be the middleman. Where does such a person come from? The question of whether or not he is or isn’t a “terrorist” — Kumar argues — is not only irrelevant, but distracts us from the much more pressing issue of why there are so many people like him, the vast mass of “small people,” as Kumar puts it, who share an experience of the United States that makes terrorism thinkable to them, regardless of whether they ever would or could do anything. Our “failure to imagine” them and why they exist makes us unable to see the things they see, a safe obliviousness which is precisely why memorializing 9-11 is so useful to amoral people who want to use it. [...]
Comment by joe from Lowell —
September 11, 2010 @ 5:51 pm
You’re complaining about the Philippine operation? You’re complaining about the assaults on al Qaeda in Afghanistan?
You know, I spent just as long as you insisting that it made no sense to attack Iraq because the Iraqis has no involvement with the 9/11 attacks and no real connection to al Qaeda. I thought, at the time, you were making that point in good faith.
Comment by Thoreau —
September 11, 2010 @ 5:53 pm
The Philippine operation was just mentioned to show how widely we’ve gone around the world.
Afghanistan made sense at one point. It doesn’t anymore. But we’re still there.
Comment by Sebastian —
September 11, 2010 @ 6:22 pm
You’re a classy, classy guy.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
September 11, 2010 @ 6:23 pm
OK.
Putting items that were not, by themselves, bad ideas in a list of bad ideas makes it look like you considered them to be bad ideas.
Comment by stras —
September 11, 2010 @ 6:33 pm
I’ll complain about the fucking Philippine operation. The United States military does not belong anywhere outside the borders of the United States, period. If this country had an actual “defense department” instead of a permanent war machine devoted to the subjugation of the world to the American Empire, 9/11 never would’ve fucking happened.
Comment by Jim Henley —
September 11, 2010 @ 6:42 pm
I feel like this post is contrary to the spirit of Republican Thanksgiving.
Comment by js —
September 12, 2010 @ 6:23 pm
Love the tastelessness
. Sure the people who died were a tragedy, and that’s what people grieved for a few years. But except for the friends and family of the victims, 9/11 isn’t even about that anymore, it’s about a lot of ritual that only works to support evil state systems at their most evil.
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September 13, 2010 @ 7:51 am
[...] Why people hate libertarians In one post. [...]
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September 13, 2010 @ 1:56 pm
[...] nicely or there’s Thoreau’s self-described “tasteless” pull-no-punches memo, in which he congratulates the winners, a list including GW Bush, the CIA, the military-industrial [...]
Comment by joe from Lowell —
September 18, 2010 @ 3:15 pm
I’m sure they appreciate that sentiment in what is no longer the Reich.
Comment by almostinfamous —
September 19, 2010 @ 9:24 am
i think jon schwarz said it best: